Fo­cus on tough­ness, re­silience

Minyip-Mur­toa net­ballers will have a strong fo­cus on re­silience in 2018 as they try to claim an elu­sive Wim­mera Net­ball As­so­ci­a­tion premier­ship.

The Bur­ras have earned run­ner-up hon­ours in A Grade in the past two sea­sons and re­turn­ing coach Claire Drum wants to en­sure her charges are bet­ter equipped this year.

“I’m tak­ing a leaf out of Rich­mond’s book and hav­ing a ses­sion on mind­ful­ness and re­silience on Thurs­day night,” she said.

“I think it’s im­por­tant to fo­cus on the men­tal as­pects of the game and it will set us on a path for the sea­son.

“Mind­ful­ness helps you fo­cus on what you’ve got to do and not worry too much about what’s hap­pen­ing out­side the game. It teaches you to main­tain calm­ness under pres­sure.”

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Mel­bourne-based En­gage Health will host the ses­sion.

Drum hopes the fo­cus on emo­tional in­tel­li­gence will give the Bur­ras an edge over their op­po­nents.

The club is ru­ing missed op­por­tu­ni­ties,

most re­cently a one-goal grand-fi­nal loss to an un­der­dog Hor­sham Saints out­fit.

“You never like to give away a game and we had a 10-goal lead in the grand fi­nal and we let it go,” Drum said.

“We made a few mis­takes and things just didn’t go our way. I couldn’t have been hap­pier with the first half, they did ex­actly what I said and de­served their lead. Then we made some changes and a cou­ple of things hap­pened.

“The Saints to their credit played very well and held their heads. That’s our fo­cus this year – to have the re­silience and men­tal tough­ness to fin­ish off games.”

Drum said Minyip-Mur­toa net­ballers had put in a solid pre-sea­son and were keen for round-one ac­tion against Dim­boola on April 21.

“We have a num­ber of new girls to the club this year, which is great,” she said.

“It’s always ex­cit­ing to wel­come new peo­ple and it’s in­ter­est­ing to check out how they play and which team they are go­ing to fit into.”

Minyip-Mur­toa’s A Grade team will be sim­i­lar to last year, with the ex­cep­tion of three key de­par­tures.

“Jess El­der is out in­jured. I don’t think she’ll be back this year, she prob­a­bly needs an­other year to re­cover prop­erly,” Drum said.

Mid­courter Spencer Smith is also out after suf­fer­ing a bad an­kle in­jury last year and de­fender Ste­vie Bibby will play for Wy­che­p­roof-nar­ra­port in North Cen­tral league after mov­ing away for work.

The Bur­ras have picked up former Eden­hope-ap­s­ley net­baller Ge­or­gia Mclen­nan, who last year played in an A Re­serve premier­ship with Kan­ga­roo Flat in Bendigo Foot­ball Net­ball League.

“Ge­or­gia can play any­where in the at­tack end so it will be a mat­ter of where we need her to play,” Drum said.

Former de­vel­op­ment player, goalie Maddi Mor­gan, will take the next step in the A Grade.

“She’s been a part of the team for the past two years and when Spencer did her achilles she filled the gap,” Drum said.

“I’m pretty happy with how it’s all go­ing, I’m look­ing to re­ally con­sol­i­date on last year and work Ge­or­gia into the team.”

Drum said B and C grades also looked strong under the di­rec­tion of Kate Cameron and Shana Mi­atke re­spec­tively.

“B Grade has re­cruited well and got a few play­ers back. They strug­gled a bit last year be­cause they were short on num­bers,” she said.

“We’ve had a chang­ing of the guard in C Grade, which won the premier­ship last year. We’ve had a few of our more ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers if not hang up the boots, then at least de­cide to take a year off.

“It opens up op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers com­ing though, which is ex­cit­ing.”